Saturday, December 19, 2015

The shaking starts not long after dusk, an insistent shuddering exponentially distributed across the long dark, each minute a febrile agony vaulting the threshold of what you previously believed you could bear. It shivers the sweat from your body, chatters your teeth in a palsied contrapuntal rhythm—and the dreams. You can’t call them by such a quotidian word, these ragged-edged visions. A face in a mirror has no eyes, no eyes and yet it somehow still sees everything. A storm-smote mountain crowned with a cloudy firmament of sapphire, and lo! the plague is loosed in the camp. Then there’s the scratching, the interminable scratching above, below, beside, between everything, and it skritches and scrapes on and on and on ...

And then, sometime in the empty hours, the sickness breaks.

You sit up in bed. And the friends who’ve kept vigil by your side stir, smile, murmur approvingly. The worst is through, but dawn still lies across a sea of night that seems nigh impassible. Then one of the group hesitates, says, "I ... have a story."

I had outgrown Santa rather young. As a child, I found his constant surveillance eerie. As a parent, you find yourself making concessions. When my daughter Lily told me to sit with her on Santa’s lap, my husband Steve laughed and said, "Come on! Where’s your Christmas spirit? Give the old retiree something to be jolly about!" I reluctantly gave in and stepped forward, sitting on his knee. He leaned close and whispered,

"I see you when you’re sleeping. I know when you’re awake. I saw it when you cooked the books, and I saw what you did with Jake."

("Naughty List" copyright 2015 by Peter Stein; used by permission)

* * *

"While All Things Were in Quiet Silence"
By David Llewellyn Dodds

Sleepless, desperate, he thought. "Prostitution is legal. Slavery is legal. But what would the people at Church think? That rich young Nikolaus, for instance—what a name, ‘Victory of the People’! But sell my oldest daughter as a sex-slave? And the younger ones, too, if necessary. Hey, it’s not like they were Baptized, yet. ‘Necessary’. Isn’t anything better? Begging? Other slavery? —No! It’s the best solution—I’ll do it!"

... on Earth be of peace and goodwill to all mankind. Good Merrimass to you all, and bright hopes for tomorrow.

--REPEATING TRANSMISSION--

My fellow citizens,

I want to thank you all for the bravery and resilience you have demonstrated in the last four months of invasion and occupation. Even now, I am receiving reports of valiant resistance to the Hourde all along the fringes.

But advisors have confirmed the latest reports. The motes in the God's Eye Nebula are Hourde transporters, ETA unknown.

So tonight, on what may be our last night, let your last thoughts on Earth be of...